minutes of May 3, 2008 meeting

["Tomasz Taylor" <taylor neu edu>]

Physics Theorynet meeting, May 3, 2008,
Room 218 DA, Northeastern University, Boston

minutes/action items:
----------------------

Attending

Participating Teachers:
Rick Dower, Roxbury Latin School
Scott Goelzer, Coe-Brown Northwood Academy (NH)
Michael Hirsh, Needham H.S.
Nick Nicastro, Wachusett Regional High School, Holden
Farhad Riahi, Commonwealth School of Boston
Mike Wadness, Medford H.S.

Participating Theorists:
Per Berglund, University of New Hampshire
Albion Lawrence, Brandeis
Brent Nelson, Northeastern
Ken Olum, Tufts
Tomasz Taylor, Northeastern

Regrets:
Jose Juan Blanco-Pillado, Tufts
Jesus Hernandez, Lawrence H.S.



1.  Update on high-school visits since last meeting in January 2008:

-Roxbury Latin School (Rick Dower) Brent gave a presentation on the 
hierarchy problem, supersymmetry, accelerating universe and all that
-most of Spring visits were scheduled for May, just after the meeting --  
will be reported in the Fall

2. Flyer:

The semi-final version of the flyer was discussed and more suggestions were 
made. The (almost) final version incorporating these suggestions is posted 
here:
http://physicstheorynet.org/flyer3.pdf
If Tom does not hear any comments before the end of this week (May 31), the 
flyer will enter the production process.
300 copies will be distributed at the beginning of next school year at 
teachers' conferences, directly (Scott) and with the help of NU Education 
School.

3. Demonstration equipment:

Rick and Michael tested our two brand new sets: no-dry-ice cloud chamber and 
electron diffraction tube.
They worked very well -- simple to use and good not only for impressing 
students, but also for measurements and computations.
Per and Scott picked up both demos and will make them available to the next 
person. Since these demos turned out to be such a success, we ordered more: 
1) e/m apparatus from http://www.daedalon.com/electron.em.html and 2) 
Physics Cinema Classics DVD on Modern Physics.

4. Website:

Thanks to Ken, we have our own website: http://physicstheorynet.org . After 
the flyer project is finished, we will try to revamp the site, make it 
informative and visually attractive, add links etc.

5. NES APS/AAPT Meeting

It's official now: the 2009 NES AAPT/APS Spring Conference will be held at 
NU, May 8-9, 2009. It will be focussed on "Elementary Particle Physics in 
XXIst Century''. Tom is in process of creating an organizing committee and 
is asking for help and suggestions concerning the program and plenary 
speakers.

6. Pairings will remain the same until the Fall .

7. The next meeting is (tentatively) scheduled for September 20.